War always goes for the infrastructure: take out the bridges, cut off the electricity and water supplies. All that used to be done with artillery, tanks and bombs.

Going forward, it will be done by computers: Cyberwar.

Every day the early skirmishes — the tryout phase, if you will – are taking place. There are tens of thousands of probes of U.S. infrastructure by potential enemies, known and unknown, state and non-state. A few get through the defenses.

Jeremy Samide, chief executive officer of Stealthcare, a company which seeks to improve cyberdefenses for a diverse set of U.S. companies, sees the cyber battlefield starkly. He says the threat is very real; and he puts the threat of serious attack at 83 percent.

Jeremy Samide is chief executive officer of Stealthcare.

As Samide looks out across the United States from his base in Cleveland, he sees probes, the term of art for incoming cyberattacks, like an endless rain of arrows. Some, he says, will get through and the infrastructure is always at risk.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats issued a warning in July that the alarms for our digital infrastructure are “blinking.” He compared the situation to that in the country before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The situation, he told the Hudson Institute in a speech, is “critical.” Coats singled out Russia as the most active of the probers of U.S. infrastructure.

Samide says probing can come from anywhere and Russia may be the most active of the cyber adventurers.

A common scenario, he says, is that the electric grid is target one. But considerable devastation could come from attacking banking, communications, transportation or water supply.

Retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, a former director of the CIA and current chairman of KKR Global Institute, in an article coauthored with Kiran Sridhar and published in Politico on Sept. 5, urges the creation of a new government agency devoted to cybersecurity.

Samide and others endorse this and worry that the government has much vital material spread across many agencies and not coordinated. Behind Petraeus’s thinking is one of the lessons of 9/11: Government departments aren’t good at sharing information.

Conventional wisdom has it that the electric grid is super-vulnerable. But Politico’s cybersecurity reporter David Perera, who consulted experts on the feasibility of taking down the grid, somewhat demurs. In a Politico article, he concluded that the kind of national blackout often theorized isn’t possible because of the complexity of the engineering in the grid and its diversity.

The difficulty, according to Perera, is for the intruder to drill down into the computer-managed engineering systems of the grid and attack the programable controllers, also known as industrial control systems — the devices which run things, like moving load, closing down a power plant or shutting off the fuel supply. They are automation’s brain.

Perera’s article has been read by some as getting the utilities off the hook. But it doesn’t do that: Perera’s piece is not only well-researched and argued but also warns against complacency and ignoring the threat.

John Savage, emeritus professor of computer science at Brown University, says, “I perceive that the risk to all business is not changing very much. But to utilities, it is rising because it appears to be a new front in [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s campaign to threaten Western interests. While I doubt that he would seek a direct conflict with us, he certainly is interested in making us uncomfortable. If he miscalculates, the consequences could be very serious.”

Samide warns against believing that all probes are equal in intent and purpose. He says there are various levels of probing from surveillance (checking on your operation) to reconnaissance (modeling your operation before a possible attack). Actual attacks, ranging from the political to the purely criminal, include ransomware attacks or the increasing cryptojacking in which a hacker hijacks a target’s processing power in order to mine cryptocurrency on the hacker’s behalf.

The threats are global and increasingly the attribution — the source of the attack — concealed. Other tactics, according to Samide, include misdirection: a classic espionage technique for diverting attention from the real aim of the attack.

The existential question is if cyberwar goes from low-grade to high-intensity, can we cope? And how effective are our countermeasures?

Today’s skirmishes are harbingers of the warfighting of the future. — For InsideSources

Cruise Shore Excursions: Theater off the Sea

To take or not to take shore excursions. That is the question for cruisers.

Having cruised on five continents, my answer is to take them. The guides are competent — mostly moonlighting high school teachers and college professors — and often they’re characters.

The first cruise my husband, Llewellyn King, and I took, on the Black, Aegean and Adriatic seas in the early 1990s with the now-defunct Royal Cruise Line, introduced us to shore tour theater.

In Constanta, Romania’s largest and most important port city on the Black Sea, our shore excursion guide was a droll fellow named Mikhail. We visited the city not long after dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were tried by a hastily arranged military tribunal that was set up on Dec. 25, 1989, put up against a wall and shot, all within an hour. It was a city still in shock from 24-years of their mismanagement that brought food shortages in a country with dark, rich soil; torture and executions; and, most famously, state neglect of orphans and disabled children.

During our tour of the city, we stopped at a Belle Epoque hotel where, Mikhail told us, “Nazi leaders lodged comfortably in the early years of World War II.” The hotel manager made us feel welcome by setting out trays with tiny fruit tarts and small glasses of tuica (Romanian “white lighting” made from plums) on a large table in a paneled, ground-floor reception room. As we entered the room, the staff, who stood at the opposite end, watched as most of us sampled the tarts and tuica. As the last person in our group walked out of the room, I looked back and saw the staff make a dash for the table, grabbing whatever was left.

We traveled north to the Greco-Roman city of Histria. Mikhail gave us a detailed tour of the city, which was founded by Greeks in the 7th century BC and thrived for seven centuries. He interspersed his commentary about Histria, which became the richest city in Ionia (Asia Minor), with sarcastic comparisons to Romania’s “golden age under the Ceausescus.”

We returned to Constanta on a coastal road. Nearing the city, we saw thick pipes that seemed to stretch for miles along a beach. “That would be a beautiful beach, but the pipes lead to a chemical plant that Mrs. Ceausescu built. She had a doctorate in chemistry, but she did not even graduate from high school. Fancy that!”

Mikhail said Mrs. Ceausescu was nicknamed “Codoi,” referring to her mispronunciation of the chemical compound CO2 ( “C” for carbon, “O” for oxygen, and “doi” which is Romanian for “two”). He added that “codoi” was a word in Romanian, too, meaning “big tail.”

“Her big tail was her nose. She would kill anyone who took her picture in profile,” he said.

“These colors make us happy. They are good for our emotions.” Photo: Linda Gasparello.

For nine days this month, Llewellyn and I cruised the Baltic Sea on the Getaway, a Norwegian Cruise Line megaship. Anna, our guide on a day cruise along the Neva River in St. Petersburg, was a notable shore tour entertainer.

On the bus, as we drove from the cruise ship to the river boat, Anna told us that men in Russia were “as precious as diamonds. So ladies, hold onto your husbands. Do not lose them. And please send us your sons, nephews, brothers, uncles.”

Anna teaches Russian history in a St. Petersburg high school, and she wrangled us as though we were her students on a field trip. She taught us how to say “I love you” in Russian. “Ya lyublui vas. Just say, ‘yellow blue bus.’ We Russians are so emotional.”

The sunny day brought out what Anna called her “Russian emotions.” Pointing to the buildings decorated like wedding cakes along the river, many designed by the 18th-century Italian architects Bartolomeo Rastrelli and Carlo Rossi, she said, “Rastrelli, who built the Winter Palace, which you can see along the embankment, liked pale blues and greens, and Rossi liked pale yellow. These colors make us happy. They are good for our emotions.”

So, too, is vodka. Anna said, “When you have a cold, you drink vodka with lemon. When you have a headache, you drink vodka with pepper. And when you are depressed, you drink vodka.”

But the funny lady was serious about showing us St. Petersburg’s historical sights: no significant edifice on the banks of the Neva or ship moored on it (including the great, gray cruiser Aurora which fired the blank round at 9:45 p.m. on Oct. 25, 1917 that started the Bolshevik Revolution) escaped her commentary.

“Just look at the taste and temperament of Peter the Great. Here is his small, elegant Summer Palace. But across the river, on Vasilyevsky Island, is the Peter and Paul Fortress, which he designed. It was the Bastille of the tsars,” Anna said.

Across from the fortress, she pointed to the Soviet-era KGB (now FSB) headquarters. “That’s the ‘Big House,’ ” she said.

Those of us seated on the upper deck were grateful that Anna was serious about reminding us to duck when we approached one of the many low bridges across the Neva.

“Please keep seated,” she said. “But if you want to be like Catherine the Great and get rid of your husband, have him stand up.”

How emotional, how Russian.

Matroyshkas and Movies: A Souvenir Shop in St. Petersburg

You great, big, beautiful dolls. Photo: Linda Gasparello.

While I prefer to go to souvenir shops of my own volition, I’ve stopped resenting being shanghaied into them on cruise shore excursions. Sometimes, they’re sights that shouldn’t be missed, like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul: a maze of souvenir shops.

After our Neva River day cruise, we were bussed to a cavernous souvenir store. Norwegian Cruise Line billed it as a “bathroom stop.”

It was just that, for some on our bus. But busloads of tourists, including many on ours, were just raring to hit the mirrored shelves laden with fur hats, amber jewelry, Faberge-style Easter eggs and matroyshka dolls — especially after getting emotional on complimentary cranberry vodka, served at the entrance by young women wearing traditional, red jumper dresses.

Against a wall, near one of the store’s side exit doors, stood colossal Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump matroyshka dolls. As I took a picture of them, I heard one shopper say, “Same size as their egos.”

The store occupies part of what was once a movie theater in St. Petersburg. The theater’s architecture is Stalinist big box. The huge concrete-slab marquee over the entrance advertised four movies or other events. Riveted onto cement columns near the entrance are metal sheets imprinted with scenes of bears frolicking in a forest, peasants threshing wheat, and people going about their business on a wintry day in St. Petersburg. There is one of Russian troops tending their wounded in the Crimean War – a war that stirs up sacred memories, leading to actions even unto this day.

Power Tower

More is more. That was the approach of the two greats, Peter and Catherine, and Empress Elizabeth asked their European architects to take in St. Petersburg.

Lahkta Center. Photo: Linda Gasparello.

The city’s historic center is a feast — a grand bouffe — of Baroque and Neoclassical buildings, including the Admiralty, the Winter Palace, and the Marble Palace. UNESCO designated it a World Heritage site in 1990, noting, “The unique urban landscape of the port and capital city of Saint Petersburg, rising out of the Neva estuary where it meets the Gulf of Finland, was the greatest urban creation of the 18th century.”

The more-is-more approach is operating today with the construction of the Lahkta Center, which includes a twisting glass-and-steel tower that will serve as the headquarters of the state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The project, which was proposed in 2005, has changed its name (as many times as St. Petersburg) and location, due to criticism from preservationists and residents that its 1,515-foot tower — which will be the tallest in Russia — would destroy the city’s horizontal harmony and violate a law prohibiting new buildings higher than 157 feet in the historic center.

In 2010, the project moved to a site northwest of Vasilyevsky Island, overlooking the Gulf of Finland. It is scheduled for completion in 2018.

Designed by the architectural firm RMJM London, the center’s website says “the tower bears more than a passing resemblance to a ship’s mast, while the building that lean against its base represent the hull. This theme continues through the wave-like bearing structures and the overall organic form of the building, both of which symbolize the power of the sea.”

The project already holds a Guinness World Record. Between Feb. 27 and March 1, 2015, it set a new record for largest continuous concrete pour, with 25,667 cubic yards poured over a period of 49 hours.

Some of the Lakhta Center’s remarkable innovations include:

It will be the first skyscraper in St. Petersburg to employ an ice formation-control system. To prevent ice accumulations and help maintain good visibility, the glass on the highest floors will be heated; and to prevent ice formation, the tower’s spire will be made of metal gauze.

The center’s lighting will be designed to make it bird-safe during migration in the fall and winter months, complying with the World Wide Fund for Nature and FLAP’s (Fatal Light Awareness Program) bird-friendly building program.

This project has Petrine boldness. While it could suit a man who would be a great, Putin, he has yet to weigh in on it.

Gallery

Neva River Sights

“The Big House”: Former KGB, now FSB, headquarters.

The legendary cruiser Aurora, docked at Petrogradsky embankment.

snowberry of mine!”

“Little snowberry,

The Admiralty with the golden dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral behind it.

St. Isaac’s Cathedral houses a large Russian Orthodox museum.

The roof of the Senate and Synod building, designed by Carlo Rossi.

The Senate and Synod building, built for the two most important administrative organs of the Imperial Russian government.

The Kunstkammer is Peter the Great’s curiosity museum.

Bronze statue of Peter the Great building a boat.

The Admiralty is the former headquarters of the Admiralty Board and the Imperial Russian Navy in St. Petersburg, Russia and the current headquarters of the Russian Navy.

Rossi’s mellow yellow buildings.

Neva tour boat traffic.

Peter the Great’s summer hideaway.

The beautiful blue Naval Academy.

The Peter and Paul Fortress: Imperial Russia’s Bastille.

Work boat on the Neva.

Folk singers perform “Kalinka” on a Neva riverboat.

snowberry,

The Faberge Museum has its own pier and river tour boats.

Street Life

Chinese tourists line up outside The Hermitage.

Teenagers enjoying summer stroll near one of St. Petersburg’s gardens.

A downtrodden man in St. Petersburg with his dogs.

Soviet Movie House / Souvenir Shop

Imperial Easter eggs in a souvenir shop.

A wooden Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost), the Russian Santa Claus.

The double-door entrance to a Soviet movie theater, now a souvenir shop.

The movie theater marquee.

A column near the movie theater entrance with a picture of bears frolicking in the woods.

Another column with a picture of Russian troops tending their wounded during the Crimean War.

Maybe the last event at the movie theater.

Graffiti

Graffiti tops a building along the Neva River.

Russian eyes (ochi chornyye) peer out of a corner of a building along the Neva River.

The Great Rift Valley extends from Syria down through east Africa to Mozambique. It is a huge depression with volcanic action, lakes and steep-sided gorges. Think of the Grand Canyon and start multiplying.

When contemplating President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, I think of the Great Rift Valley: the largest gash in the Earth’s surface.

The president, in the incoherence of his foreign policy, is creating great gashes between traditional allies that will leave scars down through history. He also appears to be set on empowering our putative enemies, Russia and China.

Many of us White House watchers think it is quite possible that some of those around the president had questionable relations with the Russians both during the campaign and after the election. Their motivation remains unclear. Also unclear is why Trump is so pro-Russian.

Russia’s motivation is known: It wants the United States to lift the sanctions imposed after Russia invaded Crimea and started a surrogate war in eastern Ukraine.

It is also clear that Russia has an interest in destabilizing Europe, whether it is by manipulating its energy supply or interfering in its elections, as it tried to do most recently in France. Russia has a policy and it is hostile to European and North American interests from the Arctic to the Balkan states.

Trump could end the whole Russian business very quickly by finding out — if he doesn’t already know — who in his immediate circle did what, why and when. He could tell us himself of his involvement.

China is another Trumpian riddle. He campaigned against China for job snatching, currency manipulation, the trade deficit and its incursions into the South China Sea.

In a classic East meets West scenario, Trump, the self-styled dealmaker, was going to sit opposite Chinese President Xi Jinping and negotiate. But when they met at the White House, all points of contention evaporated; even freedom-of-navigation operations by U.S. warships in international waters near contested reefs in the South China Sea were curtailed. Either there was no negotiation, or Trump folded.

There is a Potemkin village quality to Trump’s claims to have opened opportunities for U.S. firms in China. China has not abridged its local participation laws, so U.S. companies doing business there still have to have a Chinese partner, which must have equity control. It is a system the Chinese use to steal U.S. expertise and technology. As to Trump’s claim of Chinese currency manipulation, it has disappeared — maybe it was a dubious issue all along.

If all of this is in the hope that China might stop North Korea building nuclear weapons and delivery systems for them. Well, that has been a vain hope of other presidents. China has no interest in curbing Kim Jong-un for its own reasons and because of the leverage, paradoxically, it gives China with the United States.

But what history might judge as the more egregious Trumpian folly in Asia is his abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a carefully crafted deal to keep the economies of United States and 11 other Pacific nations growing without China, which would not have been a partner. Now the gap left by the United States is being filled by China, as are other gaps. Europe, deeply disturbed by U.S. softness to Russia, climate change policies, protectionist rhetoric, and vitiation of past practices and agreements, is looking reluctantly to China for stability in a crumbling world order.

The goals of Trump’s foreign policy are obtuse, subject to stimuli known only to him — examples include his unexplained enthusiasm for Saudi Arabia, and his complete hostility to everything done by President Barack Obama, including the Cuba opening. The results, though, are not in doubt: gladness in Moscow and Beijing and sadness and confusion in London, Paris, Berlin and among our friends worldwide.

So far Trump’s exploits are not only capricious, but also very dangerous, slamming those countries that share U.S. values and encouraging those who oppose our interests. These rifts will not heal quickly. Once a nation is labeled untrustworthy, it is distrusted long after the creator of the distrust has left the field. The rifts remain, great gashes in global confidence.

One can only imagine what it is like to be a Republican member of Congress in the age of Trump. What should be a time of harmonious playing, with both houses secure with a GOP majority and a Republican about to assume the presidency, instead is one of jarring orchestration.

The problem is the score written by President-elect Donald Trump. It is discordant and inspires fear among them.

Senate Republicans are not afraid of their leader Mitch McConnell, and their House counterparts do not quake when their leader, Paul Ryan, speaks. But when it comes to the president-elect, there is unspoken fear.

Republicans are not waking to the bright morning of governance, but rather to the “quaking hour” when they find out what Trump did to them overnight by Twitter or some other unplanned communication.

Has he, perchance, committed the United States to military action on the Korean Peninsula without consulting Congress or our reliable allies in South Korea. Does he know that the South Korean capital, Seoul, lies just 35 miles from the heavily fortified border with North Korea?

There is surely more to come that will cause heartburn with breakfast.

Not all Republicans are climate deniers, even though they may not have liked Democratic prescriptions. Most Republicans are free-traders, and the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed with Republican support. Are they going to be asked to throw in their lot with dismantling it? And what might they get in NAFTA Mark II?

The known points of stress between the Republicans and their leader-elect are now joined — almost nightly — by random pronouncements with huge policy implications.

Trump is exempt from the normal disciplines of politics. He is comfortable with his paranoia, therefore all criticism is the work of “enemies” or fools. He seems to have no icons, no heroes, and no respect for the institutions of U.S. governance or the history that underlies them — hence giving the back of his hand to the intelligence agencies over Russian hacking.

If Trump does not like the message, he trashes the messenger.

This must sit badly but privately with congressional Republicans. They have fought hard over long years to protect the CIA, the NSA and the rest of the intelligence apparatus from being hobbled by the Democrats. So Trump’s cavalier dismissal of their findings must rankle, if not darn right alarm. The links between the intelligence community and leading Republicans are strong and enduring.

Trump will get his honeymoon. Republicans on Capitol Hill will support and explain and excuse the new president. But, in time, there will be a breaking point; a time when the music will change, when Republicans will speak up again for conservative orthodoxy and the going will get rough for Trump.

Tweeting is not governing, and the presidency is not reality television — particularly when you are threatening to upend the world order on midnight caprice.

Beware the quaking hour. It breaks with the first keystroke of the morning, when the GOP finds out what its leader might have done to it and its verities overnight. It breaks for the person who has spoken up and has been ridiculed, singled out as weak.

This is not what was expected from a party winning both houses of Congress and the White House. It is a new dimension in American politics. And the quaking is not just for Republicans.

Do not tell anybody, but I am totally tweeterized. I long to see the latest tweet from Donald Trump. I am addicted, dependent, enslaved and hooked to the great man’s tweets.

If there has been one overnight, my day is going to be good. I will know The Donald is in his Tower of Power on Fifth Avenue in New York City, at his Mar-a-Lago palace in Palm Beach, Fla., or at a luxury hotel that he owns, along with some big banks, and all is well with the world because he has tweeted me.

And he is coming to Washington. I am overexcited, thrilled and all atremble that — can my heart take it? — President Tweet will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, and the first to govern by tweet.

Tweeting is going to make him the most democratic president ever. He will tweet — forgive me for thinking it is just to me — at each great milestone of his presidency: the start of building the wall; the end of the North American Free Trade Act; the beginning of wonderful health care, for some people; the slashing of that nasty federal income tax; the new Asian order, when China is burdened with high U.S. tariffs and is put in its place — I will not let my imagination go there.

Never will any president be so close to the public (there goes my heart again) as when he speaks to us by tweet, at any hour of the day or night, because it is necessary, or when the great man just cannot get to sleep.

When Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, has the effrontery to criticize the new privatized education system, The Donald will put him away in 140 characters. That is showing the power of Twitter-disciplined mind for you: so concise, so complete, so exact and right between the eyes.

If that Mr. Putin betrays The Donald’s trust in him and starts moving armies around Europe, the tweeter-in-chief will mobilize and let him have it by tweet at whatever hour, regardless of time zone. He will tell us, even before he has tweeted the Joint Chiefs of Staff on what they should do, and we will be comforted. Little me will be thrilled to see this world leader doing what he does best in crisis: tweeting.

I will feel so connected to the White House, or one of his grand resorts, which is probably where he will hang out mostly away from the prying press and the awful tourists. Just remember, all Tweet Man needs is a phone and he is connected to each and everyone of us: no journalists, press conferences, staff meetings needed. Just a word with one of his family members — and action.

Ring the bells, shout from the hills, spread the word — by tweet of course — and tell everyone there is a new order! The middlemen and women are out. A leader is one with his people by tweet, in touch 24/7.

There will be tweets to advise us if Ivanka is having a baby; if there are to be gold faucets at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; if the British are ending the special relationship; and if Mexico and Canada form a mutual defense pact.

What is good for America is good for business. Forget blind trusts, even the blind know what is good for golf and the leisure industry. If you can tweet in the dark, you can see in the dark. Trust him.

The Big Tweet, the one I am waiting for more than for all the others, is, of course, the one we are all waiting for: When President Tweet tweets “America is great again.” — For InsideSources

The big news coming out of the G7 meeting in Japan will not be about establishing international norms for cybersecurity. That will only get an honorable mention at best. But maybe it should get greater attention: the threat is real and growing.

Consider just these four events of the recent past:

The electric grid in Ukraine was brought down last Dec. 23 by, it is believed, the Russians. Because of its older design, operators were able to restore power with manual overrides of the computer-controlled system.

The Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles was ransomed. This crime takes place when a hacker encrypts your data and demands a ransom, often in untraceable bitcoin, to unlock it. The hospital paid $17,000 rather than risk patients and its ability to operate.

While these ransom attacks are fairly common, this is the first one believed to have been launched against a hospital. Previously hospitals had thought patient records and payment details were what hackers would want, not control of the operating systems. Some of the ransoms are as low as $3,000, with the criminals clearly betting that the victims would lose much more by not settling immediately, as did the medical center. The extortionists first asked for $3.6 million.

In a blockbuster heist on the Internet, the Bangladesh central bank was robbed of $81 million. The crooks were able to authorize the Federal Reserve of New York to release the money held in an account there. They would have got away with another $860 million, if it were not for a typing mistake. In this case, the money was wired to fraudulent accounts in the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Target, the giant retailer, lost millions of customer records, including credit card details, to an attack in February 2014. Since then, these attacks on retailers to get data have become common. Hackers sell credit card details on what is known as the “black web” to other criminals for big money.

Often the finger is pointed at China, which will not be at the G7. While it may be a perpetrator, it also has victim concerns. There is no reason to think that Chinese commerce is not as vulnerable as that in the West.

China, with the help of the Red Army, is blamed in many attacks, particularly on U.S. government departments. But little is known of attacks Chinese institutions sustain.

Governments want to police the Internet and protect their commerce and citizens, but they are also interested in using it in cyberwar. Additionally, they freely use it in the collection of intelligence and as a tool of war or persuasion. Witness U.S. attempts to impede the operation of the centrifuges in Iran and its acknowledged attacks on the computers of ISIS.

As the Net’s guerilla war intensifies, the U.S. electric utility industry, and those of other countries, is a major source of concern, especially since the Ukraine attack. Scott Aaronson, who heads up the cybersecurity efforts of the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group for private utilities, says the government’s role is essential, and the electric companies work closely with the government in bracing their own cyber defenses.

Still, opinions differ dramatically about the vulnerability of the electric grid.

These contrasting opinions were on view at a meeting in Boston last month, when two of the top experts on cybersecurity took opposing views of utility vulnerability. Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Homeland Security who now teaches emergency management at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said she believed the threat to the electric grid was not severe. But Mourad Debbabi, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, who also has had a career in private industry, thinks the grid is vulnerable — and that vulnerability goes all the way down to new “smart meters.”

The fact is that the grid is the battleground for what Aaronson calls “asymmetrical war” where the enemy is varied in skill, purpose and location, while the victims are the equivalent of a standing army, vigilant and vulnerable. No amount of government collaboration will stop criminals and rogue non-state players from hacking out of greed, or malice, or just plain hacker adventurism.

Governments have double standards, exempting themselves when it suits from the norms they are trying to institutionalize. Cyber mischief and defending against it are both big businesses, and the existential threat is always there. — For InsideSources

Bill Richardson could teach Donald Trump something about the art of the deal.

He has done a lot of them. Richardson also wrote a book about the art of the deal, the big deal, entitled “How to Sweet-Talk a Shark; Strategies and Stories from a Master Negotiator.”

In a towering life of public service (U.S. representative, U.N. ambassador, secretary of Energy, New Mexico governor, and peripatetic hostage negotiator), Richardson confronted Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, two of North Korea’s dictators, and an assortment of international thugs. He was a five-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The essence of Richardson’s deal-making was that the commitment must be kept by both parties.

At present Richardson sees one of his deals in jeopardy, and he was in Washington last week to raise the alarm, meeting privately with former colleagues and appearing at a press conference at the National Press Club.

The deal in jeopardy involves a commitment he made, when he was secretary of Energy in the Clinton administration, with the Russians to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium, the long-lived ingredient in nuclear weapons. There are 34 metric tons of the stuff that the United States is bound, by treaty with Russia, to dispose by integrating it into nuclear fuel and burning it in civilian power plants. This is known as mixed oxide fuel or MOX.

But the Obama administration wants to end the program, before a fleck of plutonium has been processed for fuel. It is seeking to pull the plug on the construction of the facility at a Department of Energy site on the Savannah River in South Carolina, which is two-thirds complete and has already cost over $4 billion.

The administration is now looking not at the completion cost, but at the lifetime cost of the facility. And it is saying that it is too high; although that could have been calculated years ago.

The deal was signed by Vice President Al Gore with Russia back in 2000. The Russians, for their part, are burning their surplus plutonium in fast reactors, which we do not have in operation.

The back story may be not about lifetime cost, but about the deployment of federal dollars in the very near future. Nuclear industry insiders believe that the Department of Energy, which makes nuclear weapons and stockpiles them, wants to divert all available resources to its weapons refurbishment program and, in argot of the moment, kick the plutonium can down the road. New funds are harder to come by than re-purposing extant ones.

The department is floating the idea that the plutonium should be “down-blended,” meaning mixed with some secret ingredient that the department believes will render it safe for all time, and stored in a troubled existing facility: the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.

“I don’t believe this is a good course of action.” Richardson told reporters at the press club event. He said the WIPP facility was designed for low-level waste … there would be a lot of opposition in New Mexico.” He was involved in that project, too, when he was in government.

On sanctity of treaties, Richardson said, “I think that [closing down the MOX facility] would be a grave mistake across the board.”

Richardson said that he had negotiated with the Russians as U.N. ambassador and as Energy secretary. In the matter of plutonium disposal, he said the Russians have kept their side of the deal. There was plenty of tension over Ukraine and Syria, and “we don’t need any more tension.” He said, “This is one potential area of cooperation that should not be discarded, and it would be, should the MOX facility be discarded.”

If the MOX facility is shuttered, it will be one of many nuclear facilities across the country, paid for by taxpayers, which have been abandoned because of other priorities or political agendas. The price is high in enthusiasm, creativity and commitment from the workforce at facilities, like the MOX one.

The dollars spent have no legacy except a sad, new kind of national monument: structures that have been left forlorn and incomplete as politics have zigged and zagged. These abandoned structures range from the experimental Fast Flux Test Facility in Hanford, Wash. to the Integrated Fast Reactor in Idaho Falls, Idaho to the sad, $18-billion Yucca Mountain facility sitting unused in Nevada. There are many more.

As Richardson might tell, in a long life in public service, you have to defend the deal long after it was signed, sealed and delivered. Not so, perhaps, in real estate transactions. — For InsideSources.com

BURGENLAND, Austria –There is another world crisis brewing – and one for which President Obama cannot be blamed. The Europeans and have made a mess of things, and now the wolves are at the door.

The first snarling wolf is deflation. Europe’s economies are so weak, so close to recession, that the very real danger of deflation – falling prices – has its economists petrified. It ought also to have its politicians in anguish, but whether it does is less clear.

Europe’s big-driver economy, Germany, as well as France and Italy, are on the edge. The German miracle is ailing, and Berlin may have been writing the wrong prescriptions for the rest of the 18 countries that share the euro as their currency. It has been aided in this effort by the International Monetary Fund.

That prescription, which often seems to harm the patient, as in Greece and Spain, is for austerity – which appears to work better on paper than in the real world. Germany worries about profligate borrowing throughout the European Union. But if the German economy is to escape recession, Chancellor Angela Merkel may have to borrow some money herself and inject it into infrastructure spending to keep Germany competitive and its workers on the job.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has been slow to institute a badly needed program of buying qualified bonds, known as quantitative easing. In the United States, the Federal Reserve, in a program that is now ending, has pumped more than $1 trillion into the economy and helped pull the economy out of recession. But ECB has been timid because it has no clear direction from the European political establishment — pointing up how cumbersome and directionless the European Union structure has become. It has a parliament, which has no power, and is increasingly attracting members who are actually opposed to the European project.

The European Commission has arguably too much power centered in the bureaucracy in Brussels, but no clear direction form its controller, the Council of Ministers. Trouble is the ministers can disagree and veto needed courses of action.

The economic crisis points up the ungovernable nature of Europe and its present institutions. If Washington is gridlocked, Europe is by structures that cannot deal with crisis and what often appear to reflect as many policies as there are members (28) in the EU.

But it is not just the economic wolf that is at Europe’s door. The Russian bear is there, too. Already there is an undeclared war raging in Ukraine.

At the Association of European Journalists' meeting here, a spokesman from the Ukrainian government, who asked not to be identified by name, expressed the sense in Ukraine that it has been betrayed by EU bungling.

“Europe sees Ukraine as its European neighborhood partner. But in Ukraine, the truth is different: Ukraine’s view is that Europe let us down. We are hurt, bleeding. We have been betrayed by a neighbor that, six months ago, we saw as a brotherly nation,” he said.

What was not said was that Europe may freeze this winter if the Putin regime — a growling wolf — wants to punish Ukraine and its neighbors. Europe is hopelessly dependent on Russian gas, which is used mostly for heating. Germany gets 40 percent of its gas from Russia, and Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia get 90 percent. Russian gas makes its way — largely through Ukraine — down into Italy, and even the United Kingdom has some small exposure.

If the gas goes off, Europe freezes and its economies go south in an avalanche. The most hopeful thing for Europe this winter is that with the world oil price falling, Russia’s own fragile economy may dictate that it keeps the gas flowing — but it will force up the price where it can.

Washington, with a new Congress, might want to brace for Europe’s winter of crisis and disaster. If Europe goes into severe recession, can the U.S. economy escape major harm? The new Congress will be on a sharp learning curve. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

To hear Brenda Shaffer, a peripatetic academic specializing in European and Eurasian energy issues, currently on a research fellowship at Georgetown University, natural gas is the predominant fuel of the 21st century, and it will be used copiously as time goes on. It will become the fuel of transportation as well as heating, manufacturing and electric generation.

But, at this point in time, moving natural gas from supplier to user presents special problems. It is not as easily transported as oil, and it is not as fungible.

Ideally, natural gas is transported by pipeline. Less desirably, it is converted into a liquid at -260 F and shipped around the world, where it has to be regassified. The freezing and the regassification processes for liquefied natural gas (LNG) require hugely expensive plants: over $5 billion at the originating end, and half that at the receiving end. This makes the gas expensive and its shipment inflexible.

Oil is put on tankers and unloaded wherever it is needed. LNG is shipped in special cryogenic tankers to dedicated terminals on long-term, take-or-pay contracts.

The United States is in the middle of a natural gas boom of unprecedented proportions; the result of extraordinary reserves in shale and the development of sophisticated hydraulic fracturing (fracking) technology linked to horizontal drilling. The pressure to export is on, balanced by environmental concerns and the fear of manufacturers tat the price will rise.

In the current crisis over Ukraine, a question has arisen as to whether we can help our European allies by shipping them LNG. The answer is “yes and no.”

We do not have any terminals ready to begin exports; the first LNG exports will be loaded from the Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana late next year and will be shipped to Asia. Nor does Europe have enough receiving terminals.

But the Europeans argue strongly that the mere presence of the United States as a player in the natural gas export business will have a huge impact on the world market, signaling that we are on the way and, hopefully, warning Russia that its captive gas customers in eastern and central Europe are looking at alternatives, and want to lift the yoke of dependence on Russia.

With the invasion of parts of Ukraine by Russian troops or their surrogates, gas has become a weapon of war. Russia's giant, state-owned gas monopoly, Gazprom, has been an arbitrary supplier to Europe for years. Most troublesome is that the bulk of Europe's gas supplies transit Ukraine, and that Gazprom has never behaved like anything but an arm of the Kremlin, dangerous and capricious.

In 2009, Gazprom cut off supplies over alleged contract and payment issues; in the cold of winter, the Russian bear was merciless. Also, it posts a different gas price for each customer, regardless the distance from Russia's border or cost of delivery.

Desperately, Europe is looking for a defense against Russia freezing supply to Ukraine this winter and cutting off some countries, particularly those wholly dependent on Russian gas, like the Baltic states and Slovakia.

That is why the Visegrad Group, consisting of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, under the chairmanship of Hungary, has been intensively lobbying Congress to pass a bill that would simplify and speed up the licensing of export terminals in the United States. At present, seven terminals have provisional licenses from the Department of Energy, and Sabine Pass is fully licensed.

Visegrad members swarmed Capitol Hill this week, lobbying for the legislation. They were accompanied by officials from Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Romania and Ukraine.

Their message was simple: the legislation would convince the Russians that they had to play by market rules because the entry of the United States as a player in the world of LNG — even if the gas cannot be offloaded in Europe in the near future — will send a strong market-stabilizing message.

Where possible, eastern and central European countries are improving their interconnections and adjusting their systems so they can reverse the flow of gas to help Ukraine in a dire emergency. But no one believes that it will make enough of a difference; besides, as most of that gas will have originated in Russia, some Russian contracts specify the use of the gas.

Almost all of the gas in the region is used for heating rather than electric generation or manufacturing. Central and eastern Europe is dreading winter and imploring the United States to send strong signals, even if it will be a long time before Pennsylvania or Ohio gas warms the people of Ukraine and its neighbors. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Colorless, odorless natural gas is changing the world geopolitically and economically in ways undreamed of even five years ago.

It is a giant upheaval of which President Obama is both the beneficiary and the victim. He benefits because low natural gas prices are helping consumers and industry. And he is undermined by them because the cheap gas is savaging his dreams of “green” energy alternatives with scads of jobs attached.

The technologies which have brought on the gas boom also are contributing to enhanced oil production in the United States. Who would have believed that North Dakota would become the third-largest oil-producing state?

But the price of gas, now at historical lows, is also a political difficulty for Obama. His energy policy has been based on the old reality of shortage and a need for “alternatives.” In the administration’s scheme of things, the slack was to be taken up by the renewable sources ofenergy, wind, solar and wave power. With natural gas in plentiful supply and pushing out coal and new nuclear, the president is saddled with his failed attempts to push alternatives and to create a plethora of “green” jobs.

Yet without the boost that oil and natural gas are giving to the economy, it would be in worse shape than it already is.

A similar natural resources boom in the North Sea greatly aided Margaret Thatcher’s government and has underwritten Britain’s economy to this day, when production and British prosperity are both in decline.

New technology has brought the gas boom to the world and with it a change in geopolitics, soothing some tensions and exacerbating others.

The biggest excitement is in the Eastern Mediterranean, where there have been huge discoveries of gas — and sometimes oil and gas — off the coasts of Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, and around the Island of Cyprus.

The problems reflect the old tensions of the regions and some new ones, such as the growing estrangement between Israel and Turkey and the projection of Russian interests in the region.

Cyprus, itself a divided island since the Turkish invasion of 1974, is the closest member of the European Union to chaotic Syria and is being courted on several fronts by Russia.

Russia is worried about new gas supplies affecting its monopoly in gas supply in Europe, as well as the future of its naval base in Syria. As a result, Russia is pouring money and people (150,000) into Cyprus to keep its options in the Mediterranean open.

Cyprus would like to become a transshipment point for Israeli gas (when a gas liquefaction plant is built). But claim to reserves in its own territorial waters are being contested by Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots. About 63 percent of the island is controlled by 900,000 Greek Cypriots who claim to speak for the whole island.

With new gas everywhere, there will be a rush to find markets. Europe, for example, is hoping to ease its Russian gas dependence by building pipelines that will bring gas from Central Asia through Turkey avoiding Russia. Others, like Qatar, are looking away from Europe and to Asia for new customers.

The appeal of gas to electric utilities everywhere is undeniable. It burns with about half the greenhouse effluent than oil and coal. The power plants are easily sited, do not need huge cooling structures and the capital cost is low.

However, methane, which makes up 75 percent of natural gas, is a serious greenhouse contributor and needs to be kept out of the environment. The other components of natural gas are ethane, 15 percent, and butane and propane come in at about 5 percent each. Natural gas is the world’s most abundant compound.

While the case against the swing to gas is primarily environmental, there is an economic concern about costs in the decades to come. The environmental case is twofold:

• One, that although it produces less CO2, a principal greenhouse gas, than coal or oil, it still produces half as much as they do.

• Two, that hydraulic fracturing, known as “fracking” affects groundwater, uses too much water itself in the process and may stimulate earthquakes.

Yet the chances of the world or the United States turning away from this new bounty are nil.

If the 19th century belonged to coal and the 20the century to oil, it looks as though the 21st will be the natural gas century. Reports of the death of fossil fuels are wildly exaggerated. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

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